The Iron Oath is sort of an RPG tactics game set in a medieval fantasy world, but it’s also sort of a roster management sim but it’s also sort of a choice-making game where decisions you make as you adventure through the world shape the world and then there’s a bunch of other moving parts. Sometimes games like this can run aground on the shoals of their ambitions, but The Iron Oath actually makes it work. The graphics make it feel like some half-remembered title from the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis (Genesis being the superior platform, as if that needs said) days, but with a bunch of modern systems at work.
The gimmick is: You run a mercenary company. Early on, one of your guys betrays you and kills basically everyone, so you’re starting from the ground up. The game loop as such is: You get to a town and see if they have work. “Work” can range from anything from hunting bandits to fighting monsters to dungeon crawls. You can hire some people in the tavern or rest your current crew or buy some stuff at the market to gear people out, then head out to try and do the job you were hired to do. Usually, lots of violence is involved in this, because this is a medieval fantasy world with monsters and bandits and dungeons and dragons that sometimes appear and wipe out a town. Nice place.
Part of the game is roster management: You only have so much money, people won’t fight for free, so you have to balance the give and take of your mercenaries, the damage they take, the fatigue they endure, and whether they get sick of your shit with the salary cost. The temptation is always to go Bill Belichick and ditch the veterans as soon as they become expensive, but there is a marked difference in power and capability between a rookie and your veterans. On the other hand, everyone can take injuries or get worn down, sometimes they get killed, so you have to balance who is alive and capable with the bodies you need to throw into each run. It’s like a sports management game but people are actually trying to kill each other. Think Darkest Dungeon but less over the top gothic.
But part of it is also contract management, figuring out what jobs you want to do, reacting to events on the world map, which may stem from choices you’ve made to save this person or do this thing instead. The world really does seem to react based on what your little band is doing, from bandit raids to saving refugees, with effects from good to ill.
And part of it is the tactical battles on maps with terrain and breakable things and abilities that can influence movement, raise and lower stats, heal, and all the usual RPG abilities paired with basically everything having some kind of status effect, so your carefully constructed defensive line can get Feared and then your order breaks and oh god there are gibs everywhere. Think of it like a top-tier tactical RPG or even a light wargame, where everything matters. Terrain, cover, facing, positioning, morale, range, the specific classes you took, the abilities you took, the items you brought along, line of sight, whether you kicked that dude into a pit, flanking. Honestly, sometimes there are so many decisions to make that I wish for a GM mode or Coach Mode where I could just build the team and not deal with the battle map, but I am a real sicko like that. The combat is fun if you don’t mind constantly reacting to what the bad guys whip out. It’s not that the combat isn’t fun, it’s pretty fun, it’s just a lot to manage.
On that note, part of it is a dungeon exploration/management game where you’re trying to balance your merces’ morale and hitpoints with the need to rest versus the need to accomplish the mission. Do you scout carefully and spend more time in the dungeon or charge ahead? Do you use your precious tools to overcome a trap or just blunder through it? Do you save that guy or let him die? Loot or keep moving?
One of the big selling points is a different experience every time you play it and even the difficulty levels are tweakable. But even camping in the dungeons can be fraught with choices. Do you set lookouts? Who does which lookout shift? Which skills do you choose to restore? OH GOD MONSTERS.
My benchmark for Early Access games is: Is this fun right now if they take off with the money? I don’t suggest potential. Or I want to call it out if I do. And there are some bugs and missing features, but there’s already a lot to chew on even if they bounce. It’s a lot of fun to just meander around doing contracts and stuff. Oh, I haven’t been to this town before, and they have a neat contract. Oh cool, now I found this place. Oh, the dragon attacked again…
I would say a lot of the systems here aren’t new, they’re just combined in a lot of interesting ways. Let’s call it Fantasy Mercenary Manager 2022.
